This week in Google news

Keeping up with every utterance, development and blunder out of Google is a full-time job, and then some (I should know, I’ve covered the company for 6 years). So to save you the trouble, here’s a short compilation of this week’s news from the Mountain View Internet giant:

My G-mail has been G-deleted

Google acknowledged a snafu with Gmail that involved 60 Gmail account holders having all their e-mails deleted. Ouch.

Google Blog Search smacks down Technorati

Google earned bragging rights for leadership in the relatively tiny world of blog search, after its nascent blog search engine surpassed Technorati, the previous niche leader. This is according to Hitwise, a research firm that measures Internet traffic. Google’s big leap forward: Simply putting a link to the blog search engine on its news site. Read about it here.

Zeitgeist backlash

Google’s annual list of the most popular, er, fastest growing, er, hottest search queries generated ample criticism recently, largely because the company had trouble explaining exactly what its rankings were based on.

Here’s a Chronicle story that mentions the Zeitgeist list and the top search queries from a few other companies.

To help end the confusion, Artem Boytsov, a Google software engineer, intervened on Google’s official blog, to explain that the list reflects “the spirit of time.” Huh? He then noted that the company had adjusted its explanation online to be more clear (though it still seems vague to me).